First time jerky and need some help

[billy brown]

Well I love jerky but have never done my own. Yesterday I bought a 4 lb eye of round from my local butcher then sliced and marinaded according to all the great advice here. So far so good. Smoked on my WSM for 8 hrs anywhere from 150 -180 depending on the wind (crazy today in Southern Ontario.. sleet, etc.). I rotated the jerky halfway through from upper grill to lower and mixed them around. Cherry chunks in the smoker.
Tasted great, more tender than store bought, maybe a little too smokey. My question is..... wow I did not end up with much finished product. I always complained about the cost of jerky but now I don't know. The chunk of beef cost me $21.00 CDN and you can see how much jerky I ended up with. Is this normal? Any suggestions?

 

[Nole4L]

Not a jerky expert but I believe you lose about 1/2 the weight when you make jerky. So your 4 pound eye of round should yield around 2 pounds of jerky. That would put you at around $10.50CND/pound or $7.80US/pound. That's pretty reasonable in my experience especially when you consider how much better homemade jerky usually is.

 

[okiefisher]

I make a lot of jerky and the eye of round is what I use. Nole4L is correct in the fact that your 4 lb eye should yield you 2 lb of jerky. I use a pellet smoker and a dehydrator when making jerky. Depending on my marinade I normally smoke in the pellet grill for 2 or 3 hours then finish it in the dehydrator. The smoke flavor is not overbearing and allows you to be able to taste the jerky flavor.

 

[crazymoon]

BB, I agree with the above posts about weight loss of one half of your starting weight. Your jerky looks delicious!

 

[fivetricks]

I made a couple batches saturday. My eye of round batch had amost exactly a 50% yield.

My cost ended up being 8.00 USD per lb of jerky plus the cost of the seasoning.

 

[HalfSmoked]

Yes sir the replies are correct the moist lost is high.

Warren

 

[billy brown]

Thanks for the advice, fellas. I weighed the jerky this morning and it was 1.25 lbs. I'm thinking that no way did I start with 4 lb of meat, should have checked that before. Going to drop off a taste to my butcher today and will check with him on the size.

 

[muncie21]

I use london broil for my jerky, almost no fat to speak of. It goes on sale about once a month here for $2.99-$3.50/lb.

 

[johnmeyer]

As this shows:

Percentage of body that is water

About 60% of your body weight is water. I think the percentage is pretty much the same for animals. Since jerky is made by removing the water, you'd therefore expect at least a two-to-one reduction in weight, and probably at least that much in volume. I've made lots of jerky, and in my experience, the finished product is perhaps a third of the volume of the original meat.

As for smoke, I usually only smoke for 2-3 hours and then finish in the convection oven at 140 degrees. I do it this way to avoid getting too much smoke. I made jerky for decades before I ever got a smoker, and IMHO smoke is not essential for getting great jerky, although it certainly is a nice addition.

When I started adding the smoking step, I still continued to do the last 4-5 hours in the convection oven because I have a lot more control over the finished dryness, given the more precisely controlled conditions in the oven, and the fact that the convection oven blows air over the meat.

I posted my recipe and technique a year ago. Here's a link to that post:

Jerky Recipe

 

[fivetricks]

Depends on how long you dry it as well. I did 2 hours smoke 3.5 hours oven and got 50% finish weight. The other batch I did 2 hours smoke and 5.5 hours oven and it was closer to 40% finish weight.